Michelle Bruton

Biography

Those who can’t do … write? That may as well be Michelle Bruton’s motto when it comes to sports. Desperately uncoordinated, Michelle participated in youth gymnastics, ran hurdles and loves to snowboard, but she has never played an organized sport. Nevertheless, she’s been obsessed with them since she was old enough to read a box score.

Splitting her formative years between San Jose (hey, that’s pretty close to OZY HQ!) and New Hampshire cultivated diverse rooting interests that Michelle holds dear to this day. The Sharks are her Western Conference NHL team, but her first word was “Bruins.” At Williams College, in tiny Williamstown, Massachusetts, Michelle served as sports editor for The Williams Record. She’s proud to have been in attendance when ESPN’s College GameDay came to town for “The Biggest Little Game in America” versus Amherst College — the program’s first-ever broadcast of a Division III game.

After graduating, it was off to Los Angeles, where Michelle took a job in business affairs at talent agency William Morris Endeavor, negotiating contracts for television writers, directors and actors. (Yes, it was exactly like Entourage.) But when she found herself begging her bosses to let her review any and all athlete endorsement deals, she knew she had to move into sports full-time. Stints as a PA at FOX NFL Sunday and then — after a move to Chicago with her husband — Big Ten Network were an exhilarating way to get close to the action on TV, but she missed writing.

Soon enough, she had freelance clips in Bleacher Report, HLN, Yahoo! Sports, OZY, and more, and flexed her editing muscles with stops at sports book publisher Triumph Books and digital media network FanSided. A would-be disciple of the great Lois Lane, Michelle’s love of sports and journalism converge at OZY, where she quarterbacks sports vertical The Huddle — with the help of a terrific fantasy team.